


The Unfinished Saga of Narrik Ahlstrorm

by lesbomancy



Category: Guild Wars
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-04
Updated: 2015-12-04
Packaged: 2018-05-04 22:28:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5350721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lesbomancy/pseuds/lesbomancy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Some one the hoard shall ever hold,<br/>Till the destined day shall come;<br/>For a time there is when every man<br/>Shall journey hence to hell.”<br/>— Sigurd, Fafnismol: 10</p><p>Many records of Narrik Ahlströrm portray her as a heroine among her Norn brethren, some form of a savior and troubled soul who found strength in the lands of Kryta and Ascalon to come back as a warrior to the Shiverpeaks. The truth of her journey is much less heroic and far more down in the dirt than the stories would have you believe. As one of her most faithful Thanes and a close friend for the better half of my life I feel it is only appropriate for me to write down the tales she had told me and what I have heard from trusted confidants.</p><p>From her time in a Krytan mining prison to her failed voyage across the sea with Canthan descendants I hope that the tale of my Jarl impresses and entertains those for years to come while educating those alive today. Everyone I write for Narrik is as close to the truth as I can manage and I pray that the woman I see as a niece approves of her story being shared.<br/>— Thane Jori “Gunnar” Gunsvensonberg</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Exile of the Lost Daughter

 

“ _Varied will be his fortunes who fares far._ ”

—  **The Saga of Fridthjof the Bold**

Humans and Norn look very much the same but are different in immeasurably important ways. Children of the snow and mountain are taught from a very young age that glory is what they should seek, the majority of our kind seeking some form of minor achievement the moment we unlatch from our mother’s teat. It is drilled into us that we should prove ourselves in battle with all forms of creatures by they a dragon’s minion or a sentient being. It is our culture to do battle just as it is the Charr culture to do battle; what comes naturally to us takes precedence and there are few exceptions to this rule, as Norn do not diversify in personality as humanity does.

The ones who are different, the different-minded, often find themselves singled out as being different at a young age. My Jarl, bless her soul, was one such child and from her first-hand accounting as well as seeing such processes as a growing boy I can attest that what is different to a Norn is not necessarily hated.. but it is challenged constantly. Where her younger brother was obsessed with axeplay and pretending to beat up his stuffed dragon in fake battles staged in his crib the young Narrik had her blue eyes studying the surroundings curiously. It was not a ranger’s gaze, nor that of a hunter’s– so she was thought to be weak.

Intelligence is often not rewarded, whereas instinct and combat ability is viewed upon as the pinnacle of Norn perfection. As a baby she saw things with an Asura’s eye; constantly taking things apart to see how they operate and reconstructing them to serve her benefit of finding sweets rather than war. The eye of a human, as well, afflicted her in that she saw no problem acting like the thieves and assassins of Tyria’s humans; she would use means which were subtle and persuasive to affect the outcome of many things, even crying as a child in order to receive another serving of food.

She was not a loud, boisterous Norn child nor was she of size. For many years she was seen as the runt, her brother outgrowing her head and shoulders before his fifth birthday.. and her size remained just as stunted well into her teens, the lack of development causing her family much distress and to herself and the lodge’s children much teasing and challenges for her to prove she was more than a milk drinking baby even though she claimed to be nearly an adult.

Her differences in culture are what made her draw away from her people, eyes looking to foreign cities and foreign horizons which her family and her lodge never understood or had contact with since her great grandfather Havor the Ironblooded.

As the disputes with her family grew throughout her formative years she threatened to leave the Shiverpeaks and find her way among the humans and Asura, perhaps even the Charr. She was viewed as a bug, a lost daughter, her mother striking back physically to prove the teenage girl’s weakness and the foolishness of her words.

Emma Ahlströrm told her own child that she would die without the guidance of the Norn and her chosen spirit — a spirit which had yet to visit Narrik in dreams or during the education of her hunts. She was truly alienated, beaten down to the point where she even saw herself as second-class and of half worth when compared to her younger brother who had already proved himself against others.

In retaliation of this abuse, the young girl of thirteen years of age packed a satchel with all of her belongings. A diary, sword, bow, and three sets of clothing. She managed to lift three gold pieces off of a sleeping lodge sentry and began her trek towards the human lands of Kryta to begin a new life with a new family — one she had control over.

She exiled herself in spite of her people’s insistence on strength. Many saw to call her the Lost Daughter, the one who lacked the courage to gain glory among her people. Her mother, as well, shared this view of criticism and it was often the mother who said the harshest of words to the others in the lodge. Over time the lodge fell dry of it’s enthusiasm, Narrik’s younger brother taking command and only doing the bare minimum of what was required in order for the lodge to stay with gold flowing through it’s coffers in order to meet upkeep.

The Lost Daughter, meanwhile, already had her own set of adventures in the wilds of the Shiverpeaks. She had conquered a feral bear through trickery and traps, a snow leopard felled through deception — she was learning to be a warrior in the way that made her who she was. She was diminutive, cheeky, aggressive, naive, and utterly shameless… but she was learning Tyria her own way. This trip was not exile in her mind, instead it was seen as a cathartic freedom from the rigid manner of how to be a Norn.

For a Lost Daughter it made all the difference.


	2. Thieves and Betrayal

“Many seem wise who are lacking in wit”

— Grettir’s Saga

The Lost Daughter was no longer Norn. She was a vagabond in the human city of Divinity’s Reach absorbing knowledge that most commoners and street rats had mastered within a day. A sheltered upbringing kills many of those who stray from the pack, and while Narrik was already treading close to this line she was not destined to die in the human city, nor anytime soon according to the pure luck she exhibited during her stay in Kryta, a two-year long struggle which tested the very foundations of her being.

Men infinitely her greater had her marked as a useful asset as soon as she entered the city. A disgraced Norn with no family who cared of her nor any friends to search for her, the dirty woman in ragged clothes sweating bullets in the Krytan summer was perfect for a man in blue, a man tied to nobility and operations which helped keep Kryta clear of potential invasions and wars. His name would remain a mystery from that day until he fell off the face of Tyria, the man’s records having never existed where they once did.

The Man in Blue watched Narrik as she stumbled about in a foreign world with foreign rules. He waited until she screwed up.. until she would become his. She did, and the price for his help was more than any one young girl should have to pay.

Human nobility often squabble over petty things like lineage, inheritance or even slight wrongs committed to one another such as one human stealing another’s woman or one human cheating on their husband. My Jarl, unlucky as she was in her early years, got caught up in one such situation between two families locked in what seemed to be mortal combat.

House Moreau and House Wa had fought for years over Centaur infested lands which they had no real control over. The fight was, as usual with humans, only a battle of bragging rights. Without the strength to attain glory as most Norn they resorted to petty fistfights and when they were pressed against the wall such things as assassinations.

Henrik Moreau, the eldest son of the house, found himself assailed by several House Wa men in a commoner’s alleyway near the Ossan district. With their history and the Wa’s tendency to eliminate threats in covert means Henrik thought that he would most certainly be killed. In the finest example of being in the wrong place at the right time Narrik sauntered into the alleyway between assassins and target as they were about to execute the man.

Having found a loaf of bread, Narrik was originally going to share her feast with a local pigeons in a false attempt at recreating a social life. Instead, ragged and mostly without clothing due to the heat of the Krytan summer, she found herself between a blade and a dead man..

My Jarl rarely spoke of this tale due to her shame to protect someone she sought to save, but in the following battle which ensued she physically disabled one of the House Wa men by throwing them into a torch sconce and severing their spinal column. The others met no such fate, their blades too quick and their attacks focused on Henrik. While the Moreau man bled out against the wall, Narrik herself supposedly received several grievous wounds from the Wa daggers.

The only dagger which mattered, however, was the one buried deep in Henrik’s lungs and it happened to be the one from Narrik’s belt– the daring scheme occurred in seconds from the assassins from House Wa. With a scapegoat then there would be no tariffs, no imprisonment, nor any action taken by the inefficient human monarchy which uses justice as a shameless word rather than a form of government.

Human guards were wary of the Norn human due to her standing a good head above each of them, her appearance nearly feral in comparison to the well-dressed dead men laying near her feet, one of them with her blade in his body. She would later admit to me that she never felt there was a lower point in her life, being caught as a killer when she tried to help due to being stuck in the middle. Age mattered little to guards who perceived her as an adult and she was carted away to a holding cell while a case was built against her.

The Man in Blue helped build this case, the evidence at first glance being circumstantial and several detectives put it off as a poor girl in the unluckiest of situations once the second body was identified as a House Wa servant. Suddenly, due to the influence of the Man in Blue perhaps, this evidence was lost and she had killed a beggar as well as Henrik Moreau. Several reports in our vault detail the case with great fragility, each word clearly carefully chosen for the impact so that she would be locked away by a Count at the earliest convenience.

A human legal system is like that of the chicken’s pecking order. The largest kernels are fed upon first, the smaller ones utterly neglected until the most delicious morsel is consumed. Due to Henrik Moreau’s station in Divinity’s Reach Narrik became the largest kernel in the group for the week’s judgmental procedures. She had no advocate and refused any form of legal defense or attorney, instead resigning herself to what was going on out of pure stubbornness as she realized that the case was already stacked against her.

The Count which acted as a judge saw her inevitable conviction as a stepping stone within the hierarchy and gave no mercy in sentencing. Twenty years of hard labor at the penal colony run by House Wa, my Jarl was to suffer hard labor until she died of the fumes or malnutrition as people attempted to cover up their mess. The exact politics behind the entire case were too much for myself and Einnar the Limp’s norn mentality to follow. While I pray there are some to decipher the madness, what has been done to mistress Narrik has been done.

No one man can reverse a prison sentence, nor any one woman. As soon as her conviction was handed down to her she was bound in shackles and treated like an ill skelk. The only other among her group of criminals to be convicted to hard labor with her was a twitchy street woman of dark skin, a human whom is still only known as “Tarifa.” My Jarl spoke well of her even if she spoke with a lack of details and I felt that she truly played more of a rule in Narrik’s escape from the Wa penal colony than was let on but due to Tarifa’s lack of intelligence and belligerent nature it was hard to ascertain a complete interview for the purpose of this saga.

The Lost Daughter became ashamed as she took sight of the Wa penal colony, only a single gate acting as the entrance or exit from the subterranean correctional facility for violent offenders. Men and women who acted as rapist, murderers and child molesters populated the fifteen kilometer long iron mining facility, the discovery of mithril inside of it only spurning House Wa’s taskmasters to push the inmates harder.

While she was once known as the Lost Daughter she had now fallen, becoming the Fallen Norn to those in the lodge who discovered her fate.


	3. The Denmother of New Liwei

“As many limbs as we cleave, shields as we split, helmets and war leaders we cut down, the encounters with the dead are grimmest.”

— Bodvar, The Saga of King Hrolf Kraki

A Fallen Norn was a rare sight in the warmth of the southern Kessex Hills. While she was not the largest of her race, Narrik Ahlstrorm still proved to look the most fierce. The tattoos which dotted her body had the humans mistake her for a warrior; a risk to the population. She rode the wagon to the prison in shackles both on wrists and ankle, the warm air of summer and the breeze of the hills touching her soft porcelain skin for what would be the last time in months. The trip was degrading and my future Jarl would later admit that those along the way viewed her no better than a Charr prisoner, often taking time to gawk as the Seraph wagon trudged through settlements.

The human village of New Liwei was a rare sight in the southern Kessex Hills. In my personal travels I had come near the village, it’s troubles exacerbated by no shortage of death dealing monster or raiding bandit; Centaur, giants, Grawl, Krait, and even the power of nature itself was a weapon used against the Canthan town which was settled before the rise of Orr and Zhaitan’s rape of natural law and order in our fair world. As a village, it became one due to trade and the demand for minerals as Cantha closed it’s borders. New Liwei, blessed by the Spirits, had been fortunate enough to take from the earth what was typically found in their homeland and refined it to better sell the Krytan’s own resources to them at a higher quality and higher price. Their crafty way of business and their gilded tongue led to many a small family’s downfall until they accepted Krytan’s rule and began to opt for offices in Divinity’s Reach.

From what I read of local human records it seems all but one couple in the Wa family moved, the others accepting a life of searching for nobility. In a stunning ploy for power they offered their mines to the politicians as a means of reforming those lost to society. The woman known as Alexandra Rioux informed me that this would result in massive breaks in taxation for their family while they gained the profits from the mining town’s resources. As I poured over records I realized that not a single year went by where they lost a single copper coin.

This was the family which Narrik Ahlstrorm accidentally crossed. One part murder mystery, one part cover-up, she tried to tell her tale to the carriage master hoping that he would take pity and take the sixteen year-old girl back to an asura gate so she could run home to her mother. It was not to be, however, as the cart crested over the hill and it came into view of the entrance of the New Liwei mine. From the archery towers to the armed guards and the surrounding minefield on both sides of the road it was clear they did not appreciate it when people left.

She was herded with the rest of the human cattle into a processing area. They were stripped bare and humiliatingly deloused before being given the tattered remains of clothing. At the fresh age of sixteen she was both susceptible to anxiety due to the prying eyes of repressive guards and completely without any tattoos. Like a porcelain doll entering the gaping maw of the underworld. Sunlight disappeared without fanfare; a door closed and none in the group saw it for nearly a year.

My Jarl once informed me that her eyes were a boon; those with dark eyes could not see as well in the dimly lit environments as well as she, and she felt that it saved her from several attempts to break her into the prison system. Even with the best attempts to keep a low profile she did not avoid all pain, however, as once they were sent to their cots they were greeted by a woman of Elonian descent with gaunt features and a spindly, skinny figure which looked all but malnourished. Her trimmed hair was kept up in a short mohawk, but otherwise she looked completely average for a prisoner: brutal, with a hint of sadism in her eyes.

Tarifa the Denmother. She was an infamous sort of necromancer, giving objects and affecting the luck of those whom treated her to a favor as payment. My Jarl spoke of her with viciousness, but from all that I have seen and heard proves that she is a woman who needed a punch in the gut. She introduced herself to the new group, explaining that she only helped those who helped her and that those who did help her would always be underneath her protection.

Miss Ahlstrorm’s account details this Tarifa as an almost motherly sort, a warden of prisoners to appease the warden of the prison colony. She kept productivity high, lies and deceit at a low and her pleasure at a consistent maximum. Narrik initially kept below Tarifa’s radar– several prisoners already flocking over to the ‘Denmother’ to provide their services and their skills to the sickly looking woman. Only Narrik and one other, opted instead to find themselves their bunks in the giant common sleeping room.

The Fallen Norn had become the Caged Animal. The lack of sun, of movement, was already getting to the woman of the Wolf spirit. She was caged. Imprisoned. New Liwei became a zoo rather than a incarceration.


	4. A Denmother’s Deal

“Now my course is tough: Death, close sister of Odin’s enemy, stands on the ness: with resolution and without remorse, I will gladly await my own.”

— Egil’s Saga: 79

My Jarl, the Caged animal, went through the ebb and flow of prison life like she was born to do it. She had a purpose and thought that with good behavior as well as doing her deeds properly she would be allowed out at one point or another. Days bled into weeks, weeks into months, and before she knew it she had been imprisoned over two birthdays and various seasonal events. She had no friends or acquaintances, and at the age of eighteen she was more physically built than the majority of Norn she’d see among her lodge and in Hoelbrak due to the extremely hard labor.

House Wa guards were not to be trifled with in New Liwei’s mines, either. When quotas weren’t met or other prisoners slacked off or ignored their duties those who worked the hardest were beaten; the result of such beatings was mass violence and anger from the hardest workers to the weaker ones. Women and men exploited one another without so much as a second glance and sexual assaults from both genders and across races were as common as the shankings and vicious beatings. She kept to herself to best stay safe, but at some points the will of the guards was unavoidable and several weeks into her sentence she was met with the will of a male. Never the same, she opted to stay alone for the rest of her stay unless it was expressly required. No deal, however important, was worth that kind of punishment.

The door to her cell, rusted and ramshackle was knocked on by a heavy Charr fist. Kara Bloodeye, a musclebound and tattered looking woman of the Iron Legion, was in debt to Tarifa the Denmother. She checked up on those who caused trouble or those Tarifa found interesting. Narrik was quiet, out of the way and she never caused trouble. The sight of the oddly friendly and fierce Charr set her off.

Narrik grabbed her satchel and tossed it to her cot. The Jarl was always prepared, and to this day she still keeps the bone-crafted knife she made in prison with her in case things are to get too personal. Kara introduced herself, morosely explaining her debt, how and why she didn’t care about Narrik or hurting her, only that she’s doing her 'job.’ For the second time, the Caged Animal found herself in the area of the Denmother.

This area of the dormitories was rundown, moist, and almost swamp-like in it’s decor. Moss and roots crawled up from the deep earthen ground onto the natural and man made stone walls. From what she gathered this room– this hall – was the mine’s infirmary. A few rooms had women in them, others a few men; guards stood at the foot and the end of the hall, their scimitars perfect for close quarters and any sick little prisoner trying to fake it in order to get out.

Kara Bloodeye, the Indebted Charr, stopped before the most up kept room in the entire complex. Narrik, pushed in alone, came face to back with a human of darkened skin, Tarifa the Denmother. A small piano rested in the corner, a musical instrument the size of an Asura. A hand-cranked mechanism kept the soft music which Tarifa enjoyed so very much alive, Miss Ahlstrorm informing me that a very dull-eyed man kept the machine playing even in the darkest of nights and longest of days.

What happened next is still not clear to me. I respect my Jarl, but I do not care for secrets and situations without true details. Tarifa the Denmother became allies with Narrik, the woman promising protection and potential freedom as well as revenge on whatever force had wronged her within the prison. Having met her only once in combat I can tell you that this woman had a more cat-like grin than any prowling jaguar or leopard about to pounce on it’s prey.

Judging by how things were when I found her, the Caged Animal made a pact with a mistress of undead. The dark spirits and the deep cauldrons of those as malicious as Tarifa the Denmother left no spirit unturned or unassaulted. Even years after Narrik’s freedom she would harass the lodge and it’s members, her associates and her thralls striking at us with all the fervor and strength of an Orrian knight.

The pact, as I understand, involved the spirits and the souls of those past. Narrik would be assured her protection and freedom while Tarifa would have free reign to tell her what to do. For several months it worked well, perfect even, until Narrik and Kara became friends and associates.

Kara Bloodeye’s fervor for escape as well as Narrik’s desire to be left alone by the majority of the prison populace led to a resistance to the balance of power right under the Denmother’s nose.

Tarifa the Denmother’s brood had become the resistance; the children plotting against their maker.


End file.
